A brain injury hasn’t stopped Meg Lemon’s love of sport and cycling

Meg Lemon is preparing for the 2019 Para-cycling Road World Championships in the Netherlands in September as she sets her sights on representing Australia in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.

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Meg Lemon can’t remember anything about the accident that left her with a permanent brain injury.

In December 2014, while working in Darwin, the 25-year-old dietitian was hit by a car as she rode her bike to work at the local hospital. She was knocked unconscious for 30 minutes.

The consequent brain trauma permanently weakened the right side of her body and caused a number of other neurological difficulties, including increased sensitivities to noise and light.

Lemon, now 29, admits that being forced to re-learn everyday activities as part of her rehabilitation — including simply holding conversations with people — left her “in a bit of a hole”.

“I didn’t have much going on in my life,” she said.

Australian para-cyclist Meg Lemon. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

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After moving back to Adelaide to be with her family, Lemon’s physio - in an attempt to fast-track the recovery of her brain function - convinced her to get back on a bike.

The sports-mad Lemon - who played netball, football, hockey and lacrosse as a kid - reluctantly agreed. Partly in order to face her fears, but mostly, she says, because she was “sick of walking everywhere”.

“I decided to try one of those Adelaide Free Bikes,” she laughed.

“I was a little bit wobbly, but as soon as I got on it I felt a sense of freedom.”

That sensation was addictive and, in 2016, Lemon joined a local cycling club, where she discovered a renewed purpose to her life.

“I really hadn’t felt a great sense of happiness or that I’d achieved really anything after the accident up until then,” she said.

“Maybe riding a bike was just a matter of doing something that people told me I probably wouldn’t be able to do.”

Australian para-cyclist Meg Lemon trains for the Tokyo Paralympics. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Under the tutelage of renowned local para-cycling coach Loza Shaw, Lemon excelled at her new-found passion, and in March 2017 made her debut for Australia at the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Los Angeles.

“Going there was pretty amazing to realise where I had actually got to and what it meant,” she said.

“My parents say ‘it basically put the blue back’ in my eyes.”

Since 2017, Lemon has become one of Australia’s premier track and road para-cyclists, winning a total of seven World Championship bronze medals and one silver in her career so far.

However, it’s the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics in 12 months which she is setting her sights on next.

“Making the team would be the biggest achievement in my life to date,” Lemon said.

“It’d be a way of giving back to the people who have supported me through a pretty hard time.”

Not that going to Tokyo will be the end of her sporting journey, though, with Lemon adamant that she still has plenty left to achieve.

“You probably need to retire if you think you’re the best at your sport already,” she laughed

Lemon has been named as a member of the 14-athlete Australian squad for the 2019 Para-cycling Road World Championships, which take place next month in Emmen, the Netherlands.

Originally published as A brain injury hasn’t stopped Meg Lemon’s love of sport and cycling